The Reflections of Ambrosine eBook

“But, of course, all pleasures that did not
really injure other people. She said priests
and custom and convention had robbed the world of
much joy.”

“She was quite right.”

“She liked people to have fine perceptions.
To be able to ’see with the eye-lashes’
was one of her expressions, and, I assure you, nothing
escaped her. It was very fatiguing to be long
in the company of people who passed their lives morally
eating suet-pudding, she said. Avoid stodge,
she told me, and, above all, I was to avoid that sentimental,
mawkish, dismal point of view that dramatically wrote
up, over everything, ‘Duty,’ with a huge
D. It happened that there were duties to be done in
life, but they must be accomplished quietly, or gayly,
as the case might be. ’Do not shut the mouth
with a snap, and, having done so, turn the corners
down,’ she said. ’These habits will
not procure friends for you.’ And so I
learned to take things gayly.”

We were both silent for some time after this.
Then Antony exerted himself to amuse me. We talked
as lightly as the skimming of swallows, flying from
one subject to another. We were as happy as laughing
children. The time passed. It seemed but
a few minutes when the clock struck eight.

“You will make me late for dinner!” I
exclaimed. “But you reminded me of grandmamma
and the Marquis and made me talk.”

“May I come again to-night—­to return
La Rochefoucauld?” he asked, with his droll
smile.

“I do not know. We shall see.”
And I ran into my room, leaving him standing beside
the fire.

X

When I got into my bedroom the door was open into
Augustus’s room beyond. He had not come
up to dress. Indeed, when I was quite ready to
go down to dinner he had not yet appeared.

Half-past eight sounded.

I descended the stairs quickly and went along the
passage towards his “den.” There
I met his valet.

“Mr. Gurrage is asleep, ma’am,”
he said, “and does not seem inclined to wake,
ma’am,” and he held the door open for me
to pass into the room.

Augustus was lying in his big chair, before the fire,
his face crimson, his mouth wide open, and snoring
and breathing very heavily. He was still in his
shooting-things.

An indescribable smell of scorching tweed and spirit
pervaded the room.

By his side was an almost finished glass of whiskey.
The bottle stood on the tray and another bottle lay,
broken, on the floor.

Atkinson began clearing up this debris.

“Augustus!” I called, but he did not awake.
“Augustus, it is time for dinner!”

“If you please, ma’am,” said the
valet, coughing respectfully, “if I might say
so, you had better let Mr. Gurrage sleep, ma’am.
I’ll see after him. He is—­very
angry when he is like this and woke suddenly, ma’am.”